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300 Controversy between Dualists and Monists [CH. (the rope-snake which has only a prātibhāsika existence), as has been shown above. It may also be interpreted as being a sopādhika illusion of the first type, since both that which is imposed (the agency of the mind) and that which is the illusory appearance (the agency of the pure consciousness) have the same order of existence, viz., Vyāvahārika, which we know to be the condition of a sopādhika illusion as between japā-flower and crystal.
Madhusūdana points out that ego-hood (aham-kāra) is made up of two constituents, (i) the underlying pure consciousness, and (ii) the material part as the agent. The second part really belongs to the mind, and it is only through a false identification of it with the pure consciousness that the experience “I am the doer, the agent" is possible: so the experience of agency takes place only through such an illusion. So the objection that, if the agency interest in the mind is transferred to the ego-substratum, then the self cannot be regarded as being subject to bondage and liberation, is invalid; for the so-called ego-substratum is itself the result of the false identification of the mind and its associated agency with the pure consciousness. Vyāsa-tīrtha had pointed out that in arguing with Sāmkhyists the Sankarites had repudiated (Brahma-sūtra, 11. 3. 33) the agency of the buddhi. To this Madhusūdana's reply is that what the Sankarites asserted was that the consciousness was both the agent and the enjoyer of experiences, and not the latter alone, as the Sāmkhyists had declared; they had neither repudiated the agency of buddhi nor asserted the agency of pure consciousness.
Vyāsa-tirtha says that in such experience as "I am a Brahmin” the identification is of the Brahmin body with the “I” and this “I” according to the Sankarites is different from the self; if that were so, it would be wrong to suppose that the above experience is due to a false identification of the body with the "self"; for the “I” is not admitted by the Sankarites to be the self. Again, if the identity of the body and the self be directly perceived, and if there is no valid inference to contradict it, it is difficult to assert that they are different. Moreover, the body and the senses are known to be different from one another and cannot both be regarded as identical with the self. Again, if all difference is illusion, the notion of identity, which is the opposite of “difference,” will necessarily be true. Moreover, as a matter of fact, no such illusory identification of the body and the self ever takes place; for, not to speak of men,
